Techs & Trends

Frustrated with Android!!!

So first off I've had my EVO since may (i work for Sprint) and I have loved it. I'm getting more and more annoyed with Android every day tho.

First 2.2 turned the battery life to crap because no task killers work anymore. Eveyone that's gonna tell me task killers are bad might as well keep their comment to themselves, the fact is the battery life is better with one than with out. Now my phone gets so laggy tho its ridiculous. I can close every single app, and turn around and go back in 20 seconds later and there are 15 things starting up.

I'm sorry but if random ass programs starting up whenever they want without a way to close them and without some sort of option for the user to control that was done on purpose by Google, than that i...(continues)

I understand, i use ATK also on my hero, helps my speed and life too, it only closed 3rd party apps no core processes. So 2.2 wont allow it, i didnt know that? They say android allocates memory and the random apps that are in the background are not necessarily running....my questions is then why are they there and what are the doing?

Is your phone rooted? If so use AutoKiller Memory Optimizer or MinFreeManager. If not rooted you can install Quick System info - it has a widget you can press to end running tasks and clear cache as well.

Figure out which apps they are. Uninstall non-important ones. Look at available storage memory. Clear out old messages and logs and other caches. When you exit a program hit the menu button then close, instead of just backing out, if you aren't going to need it for a while.

You may want to look into the built in task manager. I haven't played with it a lot on the Evo, but on the Epic it's great.

Nexus One, since that is what I have right now, although I am starting to work on some HTC G2 (Merge on Verizon) stuff since I am getting one when I get my employee discount come January 1st...

Most of my development is for sick personal pleasure. Cyan, Modaco do a better job on ROMs, and for kernels others do better as well. Mostly, I just enjoy compiling my own ROMs or Kernels with exactly what I want, but the framework itself is usually someone elses work. I don't have the time to do a lot of that more intense work.

Sadly, any work I do do won't translate because CDMA uses different radio ROMs and the kernel is different a bit as well, plus some framework protocol does not line up correctly. I am also a bit timid touching CDMA b...(continues)

MIUI is cool, but has a lot of bugs and can get really slow. Some people swear by it and the youtube videos make it look better than it is... for me, it has too much complexity for things that should be simple, and is centered around looking good at the expense of functionality.

Extend all your apps polling (how often they update) to either "on demand" or at a much longer interval. THAT's what is killing your battery. your task killer killed your clients from auto updating to you never configured them properly.

Apps running in memory consume NO MORE MEMORY than if your ram was empty. What matters are CPU cycles.

The laginess is thanks to your task killer, not android.

Android DID fix the battery drain issue. They fixed it with 2.0. but people don't believe them so they download a task killer and mess with it.

Spot on! The memory management from 2.0 on is far superior to any task killer out there. Plus, the auto memory management system uses very, very, very little power to perform its tasks, where as ATK, et al, are programs that require lots of CPU power to achieve their goals, are active memory hogs, and so forth.

Some of us did a test, a Nexus on stock versus one with ATK. Stock averaged out to 15% better battery life performance, with fewer reports of lag, force closes, etc.

As I said in my original post...all you programmers can claim whatever you want. I've tried going with out one also. But the fact is my phone, and most of my customer's phones last longer and perform better with a task killer than they do with out one.

Menno said:Because you didn't set up your apps correctly in the first place.

Keep using ATK and you'll see an increase in force closes, screen redraws, sluggish performance, etc.

If you mean setup correctly as doing the following, turning phone on 1st time entering gmail, start using as wrong, the industry is doomed as well as android. i love mine, but it was slow out of the box. Been great for months, still great now

ATK does NOT improve the battery life on a device any more than sitting with your phone for a bit and setting up sync's does.

You're RUINING your device by using a task killer. Period. Whatever battery savings you get because of the task killer do not compensate for you corrupting it's OS and making it far SLOWER and less efficient without it.

This isn't programmer logic, this is anyone with an android can do this because it's easy logic.

Menno, I know, because of other post you've made, that you ususally know what you are talking about, so would you mind going into more depth about "setting up phones right?" Most people download an app and expect it to do what it says it does. However, these apps stay open and in the bar at the top of the screen. ATK does close these down. But, what you are telling us is that while it may be doing it's job, it is causing more problems than it helps and if we set up the phones properly from the beginning we wont NEED a task killer.